1: Mothers and Daughters

A unique documentary showing a recurring cycle within four generations of mothers and daughters. 1986 – 2008 · 90 Minutes

Marina Storbeck with Mother

Marina Storbeck wanted to do everything differently than her mother. When she was 18 she fled from her stepfather and her broken home to lead her own life. She became a nurse and worked in this profession for five years.

Sabrina and Lukas Storbeck

In 1983 her first child is born, Jasmin, a daughter. Then Sabrina in 1987 and Lukas in 1995.
Three children from three different men. For Marina Storbeck each child is a gift, even though for her as a single mother there now seems to be no way out of the social downward spiral. She hopes that her children will have it better. »She'll succeed« is what she says about her oldest daughter.

Jasmin Storbeck and Daughter Dilara

Jasmin wants to do everything differently than her mother, too, above all »no children and not living on welfare.«
2008 – after ups and downs – Lukas, Marina's son, is working hard so as to at one point be able to lead a better life. Sabrina, the younger daughter, has a good education, but no job. Jasmin, the oldest daughter, didn't finish school and doesn't have a job but only debts. She lives on welfare (Hartz IV), has a daughter and is a single mother.

2: The Dropouts

It's a portrait of a long-term relationship that has existed for 20 years in the Berlin subculture before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 1986 – 2008 · 90 Minutes

Hans Ingebrand

Without being asked, they proclaim that they have stepped into a more sensible life: Reimer Lenz, the unconventional intellectual, whose modest home became a political salon every fortnight for 22 years and Hans Ingebrand, a former policeman and a masseur who painted.

Hans Ingebrand and Reimar Lenz

They have been a couple for 37 years, partners for life since 2002 and are leading a life without material luxury and a bourgeois safety net. Yet, they have higher goals. International, interreligious or cultural understanding is very important to them. In their daily life they work for peace, demonstrate peacefully for many causes or discuss these issues.

Reimar Lenz during Meditation

But these »dropouts« are not getting any younger and have to deal with aging, illness and death.

3: It is beautiful to be young ...

Living and dying in the »Kiez«, a continuous cycle. 1986 – 2008 · 90 Minutes

Bertha Tomaschewski, Wilmersdorf Widow

In the year 1987, Mrs Tomaschefski, born in East Prussia, was 89 years old and fit as a fiddle. She took care of – in addition to her work as a janitor – older neighbors and war widows who had no one else in life to look after them. Mrs Tomaschefski is almost 95 years old when she now – herself all alone – dies.

During the last years of her life she was often supported by the male nurse Dirk Danker.

Family Danker

Years later he founded a company, that in due time grew, and had many employees. His company resided – by coincidence – in Mrs Tomaschefski's former vegetable store.

Wedding Familie Danker 1996

Germany must deal with a dramatic increase in the percentage of old people who need care. This fact, the isolation and loneliness of many old people and the questionable health system also become evident among those living by the Bundesplatz. Danker and his employees look after lonely, old and sick people, among them also a former rockstar who now sits alone in a wheelchair.

4: The Köpcke Gang

The »ideal world« portrait of a by now rare way of living: The bourgeois family. 1986 – 2008 · 90 Minutes

Uli and Niels Köpcke

Niels Koepcke has two professions: He is a singer and a speaker at funerals. His wife used to be a successful dancer and then became an equally enthusiastic mother and housewife. In 1988 their three children, Maria, Toni and Moritz, are still small and grow up in their protected, and artistic family.

Maria Köpcke with Son Lovis

Twenty years later, the daughters also decided on taking up artistic careers. Though they both became mothers, they didn't give up their singing careers but found ways of combining having children as well as their carreers. The fathers of their children were only companions for some years.

Wedding of Moritz Köpcke and Vivian

Maria and Toni both now live in a new relationships. They stay unmarried. In contrast to their brother Moritz who married his Chilean girlfriend and – because of his career – lives now in Sweden, in a very bourgeois fashion.

5: The Yilmaz Clan

The portrait of a typical untypical immigrant family in Berlin.1994 – 2008 · 90 Minutes

Nomad Tent in Malatya/Turkey

The parents of Erol and Erdoğan Yilmaz were born in tents, since their grandparents had lived as Kurdish nomads in the Turkish mountains. As Erol and Erdoğan should have a better life, their parents moved to Germany in the 1960s, worked in factories to earn money and left their two sons back in Turkey with the grandparents. As teenagers the boys followed them to Germany.

Erol Yilmaz with Family

Today, 25 members of the Yilmaz clan live in Berlin. The parents are now retired, can afford an apartment in Berlin and one in Malatya – and commute between both worlds.

Erol Yilmaz

Erol Yilmaz originally wanted to become an archeologist and is now, like his brother Erdoğan, the successful owner of a cleaning company. His children were born in Germany and consider themselves to be more German than Turkish.